Turning the popular US morning news programme’s home studios in Washington DC into a live-to-air performance venue for its ‘band for a day’, All Things Considered recently saw the 70-plus members of the National Symphony Orchestra set up in NPR Studio 1 to perform the show’s instrumental interludes, featuring pieces from Mozart and Elgar.
The performance was mixed using NPR’s Lawo mc266 audio production console, installed as part of a systems project which also encompasses three broadcast studios, ten production suites, six production booths and the facility’s technical operations centre. In addition to the mc2 console in Studio 1, Lawo sapphire and crystal radio mixing consoles are used throughout the facility, networked via a Madi-based routing matrix controlled by dual-redundant Lawo Nova73 audio routing systems.
‘The whole experience has just been so much fun – from the first time I heard about this, but it really didn't take full shape until today,’ says Steven Reineke, NSO Principal Pops Conductor. ‘We had a bunch of music selected, but we didn't know exactly what we were going to play or where we were going to play it. I’m starting to feel like what Toscanini must have felt like with the NBC Orchestra.’
NPR is among a number of prominent North American broadcasters presently using systems from Lawo, including NBC, CBC, Comcast, Fox and MTV.
More: www.lawo.com
